Having a Swiss bank account always seemed a romanticized concept, lavish secrete vaults with long lost art and jewels of the stupidly rich. For five years a Geneva-based bank director for UBS, Bradley Birkenfeld, lived the well-heeled life of an insider of Swiss banking—that is, before he turned whistleblower and shook that secret world to its foundation.

Bradley Birkenfeld was one of the few Americans who held the keys to the kingdom. A Boston-born, high-flying, cross-border banker at Switzerland’s premier financial institution, UBS, he had access to the kind of secret account information that American law enforcement had only dreamed of through all the decades that terrorists, dictators, arms dealers, mafia dons and wealthy tax cheats had hidden behind the fortress of secrecy that Swiss banking promised.

Subterranean bomb-proof vaults and state-of-the-art security systems are the superficial trappings of Swiss banking and its culture of secrecy, but the cornerstone of protection for its clients is the numbered account system that offers all but foolproof privacy. Or so they thought.

I always thought that Swiss bank accounts were just like normal bank accounts (i.e. I didn't know they went to such great lengths to cover their clienteles identities); the only difference being that, since its in a foreign country, another country had no right to get information about the accounts.

How naive I am.

Still, a bit stupid of them to go through all those security measures only to simply print out all the information on small cards, which can very easily be displaced or stolen. They trust all their employees too much.

It's a pretty sad story, obviously many people in the US government are not so happy about the Swiss banking fraud being exposed. The main lesson to be taken from this is that you can't trust the US government; imagined if you are a potential whistle blower against powerful interests and you read this story, how are you going to feel about it then? Yeah, blow the whistle mate, and welcome to the federal penitentiary of butt rape for your reward. It's typical from the refuse that we have running the country today. I'd rather have Basil Marceaux for President than the sold-out rubbish we have had for the past twenty plus years.